Patent Awarded for NeighborhoodScout Search Technology

WOONSOCKET, RI (April 10, 2006) – The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded a patent for the technology that powers NeighborhoodScout®, the neighborhood search engine for homebuyers and movers that covers the entire United States at the neighborhood level.

Consumers come to NeighborhoodScout.com before buying a home, put in their personal criteria for what they are searching for in a neighborhood, and use the search engine to instantly focus their house hunt on the neighborhoods that best match their personal criteria, whether they are moving across town or across the country.

For example, if you are looking for good schools combined with reasonable home prices within 20 miles of New York City, NeighborhoodScout will uncover the best matching neighborhoods in your price range in less than five seconds using its patented search technology that reveals results to the sub-zip code level, so the best options are never missed. Want to find the neighborhoods within 30 miles of downtown Las Vegas with the highest appreciation rates, yet which are still affordable? NeighborhoodScout will instantly map your results so you know exactly where to buy from among the many hundreds of neighborhoods in the Las Vegas area.

“What intrigued me was how precise and comprehensive the site’s search engines are in helping consumers find neighborhoods to match their criteria and needs,” said Ron Roel, Real Estate Editor for New York Newsday. Eric Tyson, co-author of Home Buying for Dummies ® and Investing for Dummies ® said, “NeighborhoodScout is a terrific site that allows you to select customized search criteria to find the best places that meet your needs.”

To complement this patented search engine technology, NeighborhoodScout is a licensed real estate brokerage for the purposes of referring homebuyers and sellers to local real estate agents nationwide. The combination of the two services provides NeighborhoodScout with unique access to consumers early in their house-hunt, prior to them connecting with a real estate agent or mortgage provider.

“Despite the explosion of real estate-related websites, one of the first questions most homebuyers have – where to focus their house hunt – is still primarily provided through word-of-mouth,” says Andrew Schiller, a Ph.D. geographer and the founder of NeighborhoodScout.com.

“NeighborhoodScout fills this need with a unique and patented solution that optimizes search results to the personal criteria of each user, seamlessly integrates this service with opportunities for the homebuyer to be connected with a real estate agent and mortgage provider to buy or sell a home and finance their purchase, and delivers it online where many Americans are now turning in large numbers to shop for real estate.”

“We are very pleased that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded this patent on the algorithms that make NeighborhoodScout matches highly accurate reflections of user-selected criteria, as well as the unique and easy ways that users can conduct searches,” says Schiller.

NeighborhoodScout saves homebuyers significant money, time, and stress, by providing instant insights to guide them in choosing the neighborhoods that best meet their personal needs, before sorting through listings in different towns, driving around with an agent, or buying a house in a location that they later realize doesn’t fit their needs.